Wilfred Pigeon, PhD
Continuing Education
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Wilfred Pigeon, PhD
VA Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention
University of Rochester Medical Center
Biography
Wilfred R. Pigeon, PhD is Senior Investigator at VA's Center of Excellence (CoE) for Suicide Prevention in Canandaigua, New York and Professor of Psychiatry & Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York where he directs the Sleep & Neurophysiology Research Lab.
Dr. Pigeon is a licensed clinical psychologist and has been an investigator on over 40 studies that focus on the mechanisms, consequences and treatment of sleep disturbance that co-occur with medical and psychiatric illness as well as developing and adapting brief behavioral interventions to novel settings and populations.
Dr. Pigeon's VA CoE team has conducted combined sleep and suicide research, resulting in several 'firsts' including the first:
- Sleep and suicide meta-analysis
- Report of sleep problems among Veteran suicide decedents
- Randomized trial of a brief sleep intervention's effect on suicidal thoughts
- Epidemiologic evidence that sleep apnea is associated with suicide attempts
- Big data finding that VA sleep medicine services are a protective factor for suicide attempts
- Comparative suicide safety study of hypnotic medications
He is one of the VA's subject matter experts in insomnia, helped to develop the VA's national CBT for Insomnia training program, co-developed a brief CBT for Insomnia treatment that includes safety planning, and has over 200 publications.
Dr. Pigeon completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Union Institute and an internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School.
